“Closing Time is a poetic and awe-inspiring journey through an apparently unchanging day-to-day life. Nicole Vögele succeeds in capturing those suspended moments where reality seems to morph into a dream, and where the slow but inexorable passage of time comes to an abrupt halt. Closing Time forces us to take a break and to observe that which would normally escape us.”Muriel Del Don, Cineuropa, 08/2018

“Swiss documentary-maker Nicole Vögele’s Closing Time is a beguiling exercise in life-in-ellipsis observation, following a nocturnal rice-restaurant owner in bustling central Taipei after a spontaneous decision to disrupt his routine.” Guy Lodge, The Guardian, 08/2018

In this beautifully structured film, Vögele uses poetic images that occupy the nocturnal time and space, the old and young, the people and animals, the plants and insects, the presence and absence, the light and darkness, the movement and stillness, the music and silence. It is an elegiac work of intense beauty that never for a moment becomes pointlessly indulgent.Richard Bolisay, Swissinfo, 08/2018

“The same nature, seen in the first shot shots, seems to us something alien after the impact with Taipei, even of unfit for human life. Our society, Vögele reminds us, is nothing but a system for our use and consumption: the forces that regulate the universe are outside it, and we can not control them.” Giovanni Stigliano Messuti, Nonsolocinema, 08/2018

“Switzerland’s Nicole Vögele is world premiering her documentary feature “Closing Time” in the Filmmakers of the Present section at the 2018 Locarno Festival. (…) The meditative nature of the film plays out in the colors, sounds, animals, storms and purple twilight skies, ever-present in the sleepy world of its characters. The camera rarely moves, and entire scenes play out in one Super 16-lensed sequence shot.”Jamie Lang, Variety, 08/2018